During the year 2000, companies spent approximately $8.2 billion in on-line advertising. Strictly online companies, such as PlanetRX, Boo.com, MotherEarth.com, WebVan, X.com, eToys, DrKoop.com, applied almost all of their capital towards on-line marketing campaigns for market education purposes, resulting, in some cases, in more than a $100 per customer acquisition cost. In many of these cases, the customers produced only a few dollars in return purchases for the companies. Consequently, about twenty web sites account for more than 80% of on-line advertising revenue. To maximize effectiveness, most of the advertising dollars were directed towards those web sites with the highest levels of traffic. For example, out of the more than 2,800 web sites that vied for advertising revenue, about 70% of on-line advertising revenue was generated by the top 10 web sites.
To date, traditional, non-e-commerce companies have not diverted significant finds towards on-line advertising. These companies have tended to spend their advertising funds in traditional advertising media, including print and broadcast. For example, in September 2000, the 10 largest U.S. companies spent less than $50 million (just over 3%) of a total of $1.6 billion spent in on-line marketing. Some companies such as GE, Boeing, and Citigroup, spent less than a million dollars each in on-line marketing.
One of the reasons that companies are reluctant to invest in on-line advertising is the lack of the apparent effectiveness of this advertising medium in generating return sales. The advertising banners included on most web pages are small and inconspicuous and are typically not readily discernible in a web page cluttered with graphics, texts and links. The conventional advertising banner is also generally undesirable to a viewer of a web page as it takes up space on the web page that the viewer would rather view without the banner, thereby forcing the surfer to: (i) pro-actively split his focus between the page s/he is interested in reviewing (the substantive web page) and the banner; and (ii) where possible, click out of the banner. Anyone surfing the web is undoubtedly familiar with those mind-numbing moments of staring aimlessly at the computer screen, momentarily shifting the glaze nervously to the bar at the bottom of the web browser, which is the only indication that indeed the computer system is trying to locate and serve-up (download) the requested page, praying that all the wait will not be in vain, and that an error message will not be the ultimate result. In 1998 alone, web surfers spent a total of 2.5 billion hours waiting for web pages to download1. A significant amount of the time it takes to download a web page can be due to the downloading of advertising banner(s) included in the web page rather than the downloading of the desired content of the web page. 1Business2.0. The average load time can range from 4 seconds per page (using DSL and broadband capabilities) to 7-8 seconds (when using standard 56 k dial up modem).
The traditional banner ad is also cumbersome to use since a web surfer that clicks on the ad is typically taken away from the main site where s/he was surfing, forcing her/him to reconstruct the main web-surfing session.
Companies are also reluctant to spend capital on on-line advertising because of the disadvantages it possesses as compared to traditional print and broadcast media advertising. In broadcast media, the ad is delivered in discrete program breaks, assuring the advertiser of the full attention of the viewer. In print media, advertising is typically measured in full, half and quarter page sizes, assuring the advertiser of an advertisement that is readily distinguishable from the surrounding content. In the on-line banners that are currently used, the advertising information, as measured in pixels, would take up less than 2% of a comparable printed page, and in many instances, much less than that. With their comparatively small size and lack of ability to capture a reader's interest, the conventional banner ad is not an effective advertising medium for the Internet.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,141,010 to Hoyle discloses a computer interface method and apparatus with targeted advertising. The method and apparatus provide an automatically upgradeable software application that includes targeted advertising. A software application includes a GUI that includes a display region used for banner advertising that is downloaded from the Internet periodically. The advertisement to be displayed to a computer user is related to software applications on the user's computer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,216,112 to Fuller et al. discloses a method and system for offering and distributing software wherein advertisements are incorporated into the software product. The advertisements are stored in the random access memory of the computer whenever the software is invoked and are displayed before the software can be used. The advertisements are periodically refreshed by automatically accessing computer servers on the Internet and downloading and installing the advertisements on the hard disk of the computer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,161,142 to Wolfe et al. discloses a system and method for delivering programmed music and targeted advertising messages to Internet based subscribers. The system includes software that relates advertising to musical content according to a subscriber's practices. The subscriber receives the programmed music and matched advertisements from the repository over the Internet.
Interstitials advertisements offer a unique branding opportunity, given that they are uncluttered by surrounding content. The attention of the end user is directed to the advertisement and the message that it conveys for those few seconds during which a first web page is being removed from a browser window and a requested second page is being downloaded into the browser window. However, the brief period of time during which the interstitial is available for viewing is oftentimes a drawback, as the end user may not have time to reflect and act upon the ad before it disappears, and the content of the target page appears.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,761, which issued Nov. 13, 2001 to Landsman et al., discloses a technique for downloading an advertisement to an end-user computer in a manner transparent to a user and for displaying the advertisement on an interstitial basis, in response to a click-stream generated by the user to move from one page to the next. Interstitial space refers to the time period between which a user requests a new web page and downloading of the content of the new web page is completed. The '761 patent discloses the embedding of an HTML tag into a referring web page, which tag causes the downloading and instantiation of an agent into the browser, which agent causes the polite and transparent downloading of advertising files into a browser cache and the subsequent playing of the advertisement media files through the browser on an interstitial basis. The '761 patent requires that the downloading of files and other processes be suspended in response to user navigation events during a browser session.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,314,451, which issued Nov. 6, 2001 to Landsman et al., discloses a technique for downloading advertisements to an end-user, in a manner transparent to the user, and for displaying the advertisement on an interstitial basis in response to a user generated click-stream. This technique requires the embedding of an HTML tag into a referring web page, which tag causes the downloading and instantiation of an agent into the browser. The tag also includes a web address that is a reference to an advertisement management system, which system selects the given advertisement that is to be downloaded, rather than having the selection of the advertisement, or its content, be embedded into the web content page. The '451 patent requires that the end-user computer dynamically write applet tags into the source page. This patent also requires that the script, which is written into the source page by the applet tags, cause the downloading of an agent from a network server, which agent, having an applet, requests the downloading of a predefined list of files. This system also requires that the downloading of files and other processes be suspended in response to user navigation events.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,737,619, which issued Apr. 7, 1998, U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,643, which issued Nov. 5, 1996, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,185,586, which issued Feb. 6, 2001, to Judson disclose the concept of embedding an advertisement, as an information object, into a web page in such a manner that it will be disregarded and remain hidden while the page is being displayed. Rather than being displayed, the information object is locally cached by the browser during execution of the code for the source page. Then during a transition initiated by user activation of a hyperlink to move to a next target page, the advertisement is accessed from cache and displayed until the target page is downloaded. Accordingly, the content of the advertisement must be embedded within and downloaded with the content of a source page. The Judson system requires that the advertisement and source page be loaded onto the same server.
Another available technology for displaying advertisements during browser sessions is referred to herein as the URL redirect technology, which is being used at the MSNBC.COM and SALON.COM websites, among others. The URL redirect employs the following steps. A user requests a certain URL by clicking on a predefined hyperlink on a browser window (page). The browser is redirected towards a new page, unrelated to the requested URL, which displays an advertisement on an interstitial basis. Upon conclusion of the display (or other predetermined criteria), the browser is directed to the requested URL. URL redirects are typically integrated and correlated with specific hyperlinks. Because it is not possible to predict which event will be used to unload the source page, interstitial redirect events cannot be pre-loaded, and not all unloading events will launch the interstitial event. Because the advertisement must be downloaded only after clicking on the related link, the interstitial data stream is downloaded only after clicking on the link, thus postponing downloading of the requested URL. The nature of the URL redirect technology is such that clicking on the browser “back” button will return the user to the interstitial event, and then back to the requested URL. The “back” button is rendered ineffective under the URL redirect technology.
Interstitial events, such as the display of advertisements during the time period in which a requested web page is downloaded from a network prior to viewing, may oftentimes not occur when the end-user requests a web page (“Target Page”) that is unknown to the author of the originating web page (“Source Page”) that the user was just viewing. This is due to security features typically implemented into web browsers. Such “unknown URL” events, as just described, typically occur under the following situations: 1) the end user does not click upon a URL that is placed in the form of a hyperlink within the Target Page and instead manually enters the URL into the address bar of web browser; 2) the user clicks on a link in a document that is extrinsic to the Target Page (for example, a hyperlink in a Word document or in an e-mail message); 3) the user clicks on a link that is in a frame that is external to that frame in which the Target Page is integrated; 4) the user clicks on a hyperlink that appears in the ‘my favorite’ web sites in one's browser; or 5) the user clicks on the browser's “refresh” button. Web page authors can typically control events when the web browser stays within a domain that is under their control or where the destination of a URL event can be predicted or controlled by the web page author, for example by the use of a hyperlink that is integrated into the web page. In the case of Unknown URL events, because the browser is directed towards a URL that is previously unknown to the author of the Source Page, control over interstitial events is lost the moment that the browser exits the Source Page towards the Target Page, so that interstitial advertisements, for example, cannot be displayed using known network advertising systems.
Moreover, with conventional interstitial advertisement systems, there is no method for retrieval of information provided in the interstitial when the user is moved onwards to the target web page, i.e., the user has no means for referring back to the message that appeared in the interstitial advertisement. While interstitial advertising has been applied to the web-browsing environment, it has not yet been employed in an email environment in conjunction with HTML formatted e-mails, such as newsletters. To date, the distributors of bulk emails and newsletters have relied upon the integration of traditional banner ads into the body of the email for the purpose of generating ad revenue in conjunction with the distribution of the email. This methodology suffers from the known disadvantages of banner advertising, such as the reduced effective focus upon the ad, which is cluttered amongst the content of interest, loss of the advertisement from view once the end user scrolls down the e-mail.
Accordingly, a need remains for an on-line advertising system and method that overcomes the disadvantages of the known banner advertising systems. Such a system would provide increased banner advertisement content while not significantly increasing, and perhaps even decreasing, the amount of time it takes for a desired web page to download to a user computer.